Prosecutor Says 6 Officers ‘Stole With a Badge’

Six Los Angeles County narcotics officers, who once worked together on an elite anti-drug team, were “crooked cops” who hid behind their badges as they beat suspects, stole cash and valuables and planted drugs on suspects, a federal prosecutor said Wednesday.

“These men would go out and steal anything from dirty underwear . . . to mink coats and thousands of dollars,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas H. Bienert. “They did not steal with a gun or a knife. . . . What they did was worse. They stole with a badge.”

Bienert’s description of the five sheriff’s deputies and one Los Angeles police detective on trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles came during his closing statement in the 5-month-old trial.

The defendants, who were members of an anti-drug task force operating out of the Lennox area in the mid-to-late 1980s, are accused of civil rights violations, conspiracy and theft for allegedly skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars during raids, lying on search warrants and planting evidence.

The defendants include Sheriff’s Sgt. Robert S. Tolmaire and Deputies John L. Edner, Edward D. Jamison, Roger R. Garcia and J. C. Miller. Also on trial is Los Angeles Police Detective Stephen W. Polak, a former sheriff’s deputy who worked with the others on the joint LAPD-Sheriff’s Department task force known as the Southwest crew.

The defendants--all veteran narcotics officers with at least a decade of law enforcement experience--have denied the allegations.

Defense attorneys are expected to begin their closing statements today in what is the second trial stemming from the 3-year-old Operation Big Spender investigation. During the first trial in 1990, seven deputies were convicted on money-skimming charges along with Sobel.